


How Can I Live Without You?

by ununquadius



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, MCD, draco is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24650548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ununquadius/pseuds/ununquadius
Summary: After Draco's death, Harry wonders how can he live without the one he loves when he's so far away.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 37
Kudos: 138
Collections: HD Wireless 2020





	How Can I Live Without You?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for the chance to write for this fest! I'm excited to share my grieving fic with you all!
> 
> Thanks a lot to C and S for the beta work, the spelling the grammar and the parts that didn't make sense! If there's anything badly written is entirely my fault!
> 
> This fic is inspired by the prompt: 83 - So Far Away - Avenged Sevenfold for Fic. 
> 
> Hope you like it!

Harry stared at the tombstone —the delicate words etched into the marble surface, the date —he couldn't understand the date. The gap between the birth and death years were too small. He tried to stop the tears threatening to escape, but couldn't manage it. They ran freely down his face. 

A hand touched his, tentatively. He grasped it as if his life depended on it, and indeed, that’s what it felt like. Part of him was under the tombstone, but he needed to remember that the owner of the tiny hand he was holding needed him the most now. 

He looked at Scorpius. The boy had tears on his face too, and looked at the name on the tombstone as if he were trying to learn it by heart. Harry hugged him with one arm. It wasn’t fair. 

“Let’s go home, Scorp.” 

They were the only people in the cemetery now. Everybody else had gone home long ago, although some, like their friends, had been there for almost as long as them. 

Scorpius nodded and put himself closer to Harry. 

* * *

_You have to get up, Harry._

He tried, but it didn’t seem like something necessary now that there wasn’t going to be anyone waiting for him at the breakfast table. He rolled over and looked at the sheets and blankets in confusion. Something was wrong with them. 

_Scorpius is going to get up_. He needs you. 

He nodded, as if someone had whispered those words directly into his head, yet he didn't move, simply stared at the blankets in confusion. 

_For Merlin’s sake, Harry! Get up! Breakfast! Scorpius!_

The right side of the bed was even. That was it. The blankets weren’t piled up in weird ways, and the pillows were fluffy, as if no one had slept on them. 

_Of course no one slept there!_

Angrily, he made a mess with the sheets and blankets. They ended on the floor. Soon enough, the pillows followed. He got up, and made an effort to not look at the picture on his bedside table. 

Scorpius needed breakfast. 

* * *

“I don’t want to go back to Hogwarts,” Scorpius said on the second day while Harry was making dinner. 

“You’ll have to go back, Scorp. Not now, but next week. On Monday.” He used a spell to turn the meat on the pan, and looked at the potatoes. Cooking was good. Cooking made him forget about things. 

“I heard you yesterday. You told Hermione you weren’t going to go to work until next month.” 

He raised his gaze from the pans, but lowered it almost instantly again. It was difficult to look at Scorpius. Harry focused on the food. 

“Lay the table, please.” He hated that chore. It made him feel like he was going to make a mistake, and put out cutlery for three instead of just for two. He supposed that putting that task on a child wasn’t fair either. “We’ll talk about it, okay?” 

“I just don’t want to go now,” Scorpius said. He picked up the forks and knives, and closed the drawer with a little too much force. Forks and knives for two. 

* * *

The October rain fell heavily on the other side of the windows, making it difficult to see the forest that surrounded the house. The three of them were sat on the living room sofas, Ron and Hermione holding their teacups, and Harry staring at the rain. 

“So what’s your plan? Stay here all day, not seeing anyone, feeling sorry for yourself?” Ron asked. 

Harry only glared at him. It was too much effort to explain why he couldn’t go back to work after three weeks; how something inside him broke every time he looked at the right side of the bed; how he was scared of losing Scorpius if he went back to Hogwarts; how something was missing inside of him now. He supposed that when his husband had died, the part of Harry that belonged to him died too. It wasn’t like what had happened with the Horcrux, it was something subtler. He wondered if it was real, if healers could fix it. 

“Harry, I understand that you miss Draco, but—Harry?” Hermione looked at him worriedly. 

That name, he didn’t want to hear that name. He couldn’t even say it himself. It was too painful. 

“I’m fine,” he snapped. 

“And Scorpius?” Ron asked timidly. 

“Scorpius will go back to Hogwarts next week.” He focused on the hem of his sweater. Well, it wasn’t his. He didn't have sweaters that were this soft or this expensive, but it smelled good. It smelled like _him_. 

“I meant if he’s alright.” 

“He lost his mother when he was four years old, and seven years later he lost his father, and got stuck with a stranger, what do you think?” 

Ron didn’t insist, and Harry kept looking at the rain. Would the sweater stop smelling so good if he wore it often? 

* * *

Harry wandered from room to room as if he were a ghost. The house was too big when it was just him, but the people he needed the most were too far away. One in Scotland and the other one… He wondered if Heaven was real. Was he… Draco up there? 

He hesitated in the doorframe of Draco’s studio. He hadn’t gone inside since Draco asked him to bring him one of his books to the hospital. That had been a lifetime ago, when Draco was ill, and Harry had hope. The book was in their bedroom now. Draco hadn’t finished it, and Harry had left it on his bedside table, as if he would come back some day and read it before bed. 

He went inside. 

In spite of the winter weather, sunlight bathed the room, making it look cosy. He had often mocked Draco about how serious it looked, like an old lawyer’s office. However, Harry felt a pang of longing when he saw the mahogany furniture, and the dark green leather sofa. They were another reminder that Draco was far away now. 

He sat on the desk chair, and looked around. 

He remembered Draco staying there until late at night, working on intricate runes and spells Harry didn’t understand. He used to come in then, with the excuse of a cup of tea, to check that his idiot husband didn’t work himself to death. They talked then, talked and talked for hours: about all the silly things that crossed their minds, and about other more serious topics. 

Harry picked up one of the expensive quills, and caressed his face with the feather. Draco would kill him if he saw him now. He tore a bit of parchment, and wrote: _I love you, how can I live without you?_

He left the note on the desk, as he used to, although this time, he wouldn’t find a note on his desk in answer. 

* * *

They took a step back to admire their hard work. Harry frowned and Scorpius looked in disapproval at the big tree. 

“It’s all wrong,” Scorpius said. 

“Blue isn’t a Christmas colour,” Harry added. 

“It should be just gold, and white,” Scorpius said, using his best posh voice. 

“With some red touches,” Harry pointed out. 

“This must be the _horridest_ tree in all Britain!” They said together, and laughed. 

It was the first time in months that Harry had laughed like that, it felt freeing, although soon enough he realised he was crying too. And he wasn’t the only one. He put an arm around Scorpius’s shoulders and guided him to the sofa. They sat very close to each other, and hugged, and cried together for what felt like hours. However, it didn’t feel like the anguished cries that had shattered him in the last months. Somehow, sharing his pain with Scorpius felt good, even. 

“I miss him so much, dad,” Scorpius whispered at last, his wet face hidden in Harry’s jumper. 

Harry hugged him tighter, wishing not for the first time that it was him under the ground, so Scorpius could have Draco with him. 

“I miss him too,” he said to Scorpius’ head, where he placed a kiss. 

Scorpius wriggled a bit, so Harry let him go off his embrace. The boy put his head on Harry’s shoulder, and Harry hugged him with his arm, not wanting to be separated from the only person that kept him sane. 

“I wrote him letters when I was at Hogwarts,” Scorpius said then. “Do you think I’m crazy? I know he can’t read them, because he’s… because he’s… but I needed to tell him all the things that were happening at school.” 

“I think that’s a nice idea, Scorp. I write him notes too,” Harry confessed. 

“Maybe he can read them. The Fat Friar says that if you don’t come back as a ghost you go to Beyond, but I like to think he’s here with us.” 

“I like to think that too. Sometimes I think he’s watching us so we behave, and so I don’t feed you too many sweets or let you go out with just a T-shirt in winter,” Harry said. Raising Scorpius alone was one of the things that scared him the most. What if he fucked up Draco’s child? Draco would come back from the dead to kill him. 

Scorpius giggled. 

“I’m sure he’d scream at you and call you a git.” 

“No doubt.” 

They stayed in the living room together sharing stories about Draco, and for one glorious night, it was almost as if he was still with them. 

* * *

“I didn’t know that having The Chosen One at my birthday party would be so boring,” Pansy said. 

She rested her back on the banister of the balcony, and looked at Harry. He had come outside when he couldn’t stand the party anymore. These were Draco’s friends, not his. It felt wrong to be there without him. 

“You realise I’m not a clown you can hire to entertain your guests?” He took a sip of his wine, and looked at the city under them. 

Pansy turned around too, and contemplated the distant buildings, cars, and people with him. It all seemed to belong to another world, far away from the pain and the grieving. 

“How are you?” she asked. 

“What do you think? I thought that after all this time, it’d feel better, but it still hurts.” 

“Yes. It hurts so much. I didn’t know that prat was going to make us so miserable.” 

She took a big sip from her cup, and Harry properly looked at her for the first time that night. As always, she had put an effort on looking dashing, but he could see the pain in her eyes. He realised that they had both lost the person they relied on the most: his husband, and her best friend. 

“How do you do it?” he asked. “I feel guilty just for being here, like I’m forgetting about him because I’m having fun at a party.” 

“You’re not having fun here,” she smirked. 

“No.” A smile curved Harry’s mouth upwards. “But you know what I mean. And Pansy… Aren’t you afraid of forgetting about him? Sometimes I can’t remember the things he liked or the things he’d say.” 

The thought had been bothering him since the week before, when he saw a butterfly and couldn’t remember if Draco loved them or hated them. 

“What bothers me is not having anyone to talk to anymore.” 

She finished her drink and went back inside. She was right, of course, Harry didn’t remember the last time he had really talked to anyone. He was alone, and lost. 

* * *

Ron found him in the Ministry toilets, sat on the dirty floor, and crying his eyes out. It was the 5th of June, Draco’s birthday, only this year, he had no one to write a card to, buy a present for, bake a cake for, to tease, and to talk, and to spend a lovely day with. No one at all. 

Ron didn’t try to talk to him, or to rush him. He sat down next to him, and held him, while muttering nonsenses and kissing his hair. 

Harry tried to explain, but his friend hushed him, and kept hugging him. 

* * *

The summer was too hot for London, but it made the ice-cream at Fortescue’s all the more enjoyable. Harry took a spoonful of his chocolate sundae, and looked at Scorpius, who was happily eating his and reading one of his new school books. 

It had been the hardest year of their lives, and he knew it wasn’t over, that they had to learn to live with all the pain and the sorrow that Draco’s death had caused. He knew that he had to learn to live with the hole in his heart, and soul; with the fear of forgetting about Draco; with the angst of seeing his things, his chair at the dining table, the picture on his bedside table, and the right side of the bed intact every morning. However, he knew that little by little he was getting his life back, people to talk to, reasons to smile and to laugh, people to rely on. And he also knew that it would be hard to find reasons to live without Draco, when he has so much to say, and Draco was so far away.*

**Author's Note:**

> *These words and the ones Harry writes in his note to Draco are part of the lyrics of the song that inspired this fic. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and leave comments and kudos if you want! They're greatly appreaciated!
> 
> * * *
> 
> 🎵 This work is part of H/D Wireless, a song inspired, anon, Drarry fest with its home on tumblr! 
> 
> If you enjoyed this, shower our content creators with all the love you have to give by leaving kudos ❤️ and comments 💌 on their work!
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